


To Have and To Hold, To Be Had and To Be Held

by Ripuku



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripuku/pseuds/Ripuku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo finds himself unable to sleep and goes to a quiet place to try to rest. A visit from the Outsider proves just how far he’s stretched himself, and how lonely he’s come to be in the time of peace. Corvo/Outsider Low Chaos</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Have and To Hold, To Be Had and To Be Held

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeverwinterThistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/gifts).



> Posted here in part for Neverwinter Thistle, who has written several Dishonored fics that make me writhe with feels and screech at the perfection of amazing plots and characters, and who also found me on Tumblr and gave me feedback on this work. I've been out of the fanfiction game for several years, and am now getting back thanks to her, and would like to thank her for the encouragement. Being encouraged by an author you respect and whose stories you adore is a wonderful and amazing thing.
> 
> So, Thistle, you can thank (or blame) yourself for this. Honor on your whale today. Honor, I say.

Sleeping didn’t bring him rest. Not like it used to, not anymore. It made no sense. His task was complete, Emily was safe and Jessamine’s murderers dealt with suitably. Sleep should have come easily.

It didn’t.

He tossed and turned in his bed like the sea in a storm. Always restless, his body exhausted, his mind running a mile a minute. No matter what or how he tried, he found himself greeting the sun every morning, it’s lazy ascent tormenting him with the knowledge that he’d failed again. He hated failure.

Dawn proper found his room empty. Where he hid himself was somewhere dawn would never properly see. A hidden room within the palace where the only light came from small whale-oil lanterns, casting long shadows across rich purple fabrics. Here was where Corvo found peace, albeit a strange one, his mind lulled into near stillness by low, quiet songs that emanated from small charms pinned to the fabrics, from runes placed upon the alter. In this tiny room, he often dozed and woke draped over the alter like the fabric. He stopped being embarrassed about it after the third time.

If the Outsider minded Corvo sleeping on the alter, he’d have done something about it. The mark on his hand hummed softly, though whether in agreement or a simple addition to the songs of the runes, he wasn’t sure.

The Outsider didn’t visit, and Corvo found himself missing the strange deity, though his constant working, and directing, and training, and lecturing, and so on and on and on, left him little time to mourn overly the loss of contact with him. Lately, however, the silence and solitude were beginning to get to him. Emily was worried and had taken to playing match-maker.

He laughed, running a hand through his unkempt hair, looking at the little shrine.

“I must be dreadfully dull, now, for you to not visit anymore. It doesn’t surprise me much, I’ve no more vengeance left in me. Just like a toy with no more use.”

He jumped, rattling charms and runes, as another voice joined his in the room.

“My dear Corvo, is that really what you think of yourself?”

Corvo didn’t look up at the Outsider until he had remembered how to breathe properly. When he did, the Outsider was regarding him with a look of amused interest.

“Well,” Corvo began, “When you don’t show yourself for months, a man gets doubtful. And really, it wouldn’t kill you to announce your presence a little better, would it? You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

The Outsider’s oil-black eyes crinkled in amusement, “I’m sorry.”

“Liar.”

The amusement deepened. the shadows stretching a little more, the world beginning to tilt as the Void drew them in slowly. Corvo gave himself to the feeling of weightlessness, letting himself be pulled and lifted. It was a welcome change, however disorienting.

“Corvo, I am many things, but have I ever been a liar?”

Corvo shrugged, watching a lampost spin in the distance. The Outsider pulled his attention back by using his shadows to lift Corvo from his seat and to hold him in front of him. Corvo found he couldn’t resist, the feeling of being touched in a way that wasn’t limited to what decorum called for was nicer than he’d ever admit.

“You didn’t answer me.”

“You could read my mind and have the answer yourself.” he closed his eyes, focusing on the feeling of the shadows holding him. It was a comforting thing. He was shocked into opening them again when he felt a cool hand brush his cheek, and found himself staring into the Outsider’s face as the Outsider regarded him with a look of interest.

“Now where would the fun be in that?” he traced Corvo’s cheek again and Corvo found himself leaning into the touch. Corvo watched confusion dance across the deity’s features, slowly replaced with some unreadable expression. Unreadable he was used to, and understood in some strange way.

“Where indeed.” he deigned that question with an answer, before sighing.

“Do you have any particular use for me, here in the Void?”

The Outsider tilted his head, that same unreadable expression on his face, “You are the one who called me, Corvo.”

Corvo sighed again, looking away, unable to maintain eye contact with the Outsider, “I…”

The Outsider watched him, “You are lonely.”

“I thought reading my mind was boring.”

The Outsider laughed, “It is, but I did not need to read your mind to see that.”

Corvo set his jaw, disliking being laughed at, “Put me down.”

“My dear Corvo.” the tracing fingers wandered down to his jaw, then his neck, raising goosebumps on his skin. It felt so real, and altogether unreal. Was it the nature of the Outsider? Or had he been so long without contact that he’d simply forgotten what it felt like to be touched? Either way, he had to stifle a whimpering moan as the fingers pulled away, but didn’t entirely succeed.

The amusement was back. “I think you’d be more upset with me if I did.”

Corvo would never admit out loud just how right the Outsider was.

The shadows undressed him slowly, curling around his limbs, holding, supporting, caressing. Corvo allowed himself to indulge fully in it, what good was there to be embarrassed in front of someone older than comprehension?

As nice as the shadows were, their touched paled quickly in comparison to the hands tracing the lines of his body. He arched into the touch, wanting more, more, more. But the Outsider had all the time in the world, and took it, tracing, learning, memorizing. Corvo watched, and wondered if the Outsider’s form beneath his clothing was as real and unreal as his hands.

He reached out, wanting to know and learn just as the Outsider had, pulling the deity close. The Outsider didn’t resist, letting Corvo bury his face in his neck, though Corvo had a moment of satisfaction when he seemed to startle the deity by kissing the cool skin he found there. The Outsider smelled of the sea and salt air mixed with the subtle tang of old, soft leather, and Corvo loved it. He tasted of salt and wind and something else unnameable and Corvo wanted to kiss and nip and suck until he could name it.

He failed utterly to hide his disappointment when the Outsider moved away and took his scent and taste with him, though the disappointment quickly sailed away into the void when the Outsider’s lips met his own in a kiss that threatened to devour him entirely. The thought sent heat pooling to his groin despite the cool touch of the shadows still circling his body.

His hands dragged across the leather of the Outsider’s jacket, dragged it down, dragged it off. Where in the Void it went after that, he didn’t know, didn’t care. He found that the Outsider beneath the leather and cloth was as he thought, both real and unreal, and everything he wanted. The Outsider cradled Corvo in his arms and his shadows, holding him, surrounding him, and, yes, filling him. There in the Void, Corvo’s pleasured cries were only for the Outsider, something the Outsider would guard jealously.

Corvo never wanted it to end, but after, the Outsider would remind him that everything ended, but that didn’t mean it was ended forever. The shadows returned Corvo’s clothing to him, dressing him before lowering him to solid ground again. He fell asleep to soft whale songs, the slow rocking of the Void, and soft fingers carding through his hair.

He awoke in his own bed to the same soft whale songs, feeling more rested than he had ever been, and far more content.

He looked forward to the end of the days, when the sun would disappear, the shadows lengthen, and his dreams begin with whale songs and three simple words.

“My dear Corvo.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be some hard-core, graphic Corvo/Outsider smut, but The Outsider was proving difficult to be involved in sex in more than an academic sense and still remain in character. So you get some literal touchy-feely sex instead and hopefully hardcore will happen later.


End file.
